What do you with the empty bottles of ink?

[Centurion]

I have yet to use up a bottle of ink, but it’s going to happen in a month or two. Some of my ink bottle are rather nice, I wonder if they can be repurposed to do something else, instead of having them disposed.

 

How have you repurpose a pretty ink bottle with all of its ink used up? 

[A Smug Dill]

Even though I now, according to my spreadsheet, still have 625 bottles of ink (that were SKUs) here after giving about thirty, or maybe three dozen, away, I've really only ever used up one bottle of ink — Parker Penman Sapphire — a very long time ago. That bottle went into the garbage bin, I'm sure, before the whole recycling initiative became a do-or-be-shamed thing.

 

That doesn't mean one cannot put other ink, or condiments, or sunscreen, or plants in a properly cleaned out and suitably sized empty ink bottle. I think Engeika (long before the Wancher business destroyed it) sent me four empty Pilot Iroshizuku bottles as freebies with an order once. One of them is still holding Noodler's Ink X-Feather black ink today, when what I ordered from Amazon arrived with a cracked and leaky plastic lid (and Amazon gave me a full refund for the item, although >90% of the ink remained in the glass bottle).

[JulieParadise]

I try to give my empty bottles away to people who have a purpose for them, but since these bottles are fairly heavy and shipping would be costly, mostly it is only an option to schlepp them to a local meetup. 

 

I for myself have close to zero use for empty ink bottles apart from the two Akkerman bottles that I filled with coloured water to decorate a space near my desk. I keep my ink under a commode/chest of drawers, as this is the place in my home with the least temperature difference. A lot of my bottled ink gets decanted into more practical eyedropper bottles if the original bottle is to big to fit the box or takes too much space (looking at you, pretty but huge Graf von Faber Castell, Diamine Inkvent "little feet" and Lamy bottles).

 

The bottles themselves, pretty as they may be, have no practical use for me beyond getting the ink to my house. 

[ParramattaPaul]

I keep the few uniquely shaped or vintage ones with aesthetics warrant keeping.  The rest go in recycling bin. 'Few' is the operative word in the first sentence.

[txomsy]

I refill them.

 

I have some large bottles that will take me long to empty and are difficult to load ink from once the level goes down, so I pour the ink on empty bottles for easier pen refilling. The Noodler's 4.5Oz bottles are a good example.

 

I do also have plastic ink bottles that are uncomfortable to fill from (like ESSRI, OS Nitrogen, Troublemaker's or some Diamine) whose contents are easier to use in more amenable crystal bottles (and will evaporate less).

 

Then one can have some bleach and some ammonia in reserve for pen cleaning.

 

Lots of (potential) uses, you see.

[Wahl]

I keep them, some get refilled, others given away....

[The Elevator]

There are these cute little J. Herbin 10 mL bottles, and when I finish mine off it will become my travel bottle so that I can take my piston-fillers on the road. I got mine from Jetpens in order to get to the free shipping mark

 

[antares1966]

8 hours ago, JulieParadise said:

I try to give my empty bottles away to people who have a purpose for them, but since these bottles are fairly heavy and shipping would be costly, mostly it is only an option to schlepp them to a local meetup. 

 

I for myself have close to zero use for empty ink bottles apart from the two Akkerman bottles that I filled with coloured water to decorate a space near my desk. I keep my ink under a commode/chest of drawers, as this is the place in my home with the least temperature difference. A lot of my bottled ink gets decanted into more practical eyedropper bottles if the original bottle is to big to fit the box or takes too much space (looking at you, pretty but huge Graf von Faber Castell, Diamine Inkvent "little feet" and Lamy bottles).

 

The bottles themselves, pretty as they may be, have no practical use for me beyond getting the ink to my house. 

Mmm, those Ackerman bottles tho...

[Sailor Kenshin]

Hoard them!  😜

 

So I can mix my own out of all those teeny annoying sample vials.  

[VillersCotterets]

Unfortunately, some ink brands do not offer user-friendly refill bottles for fountain pens. As a result, I tend to save empty bottles from brands with practical designs for future use, while keeping those from less user-friendly brands for experimenting with ink mixes. However, to be frank, since I rarely empty a full ink bottle and tend to buy more than I use up, I often accumulate more bottles than I need. I gave a few to help friends to start in the hobby but that opportunity doesn't present itself often.

[Mercian]

12 hours ago, Centurion said:

Some of my ink bottle are rather nice, I wonder if they can be repurposed to do something else, instead of having them disposed.

I second the advice to keep them to re-use as ink bottles.

 

The plastic bottles in which some inks are posted are gas-permeable. Which means not only that water & solvents can evaporate out of the ink through the walls of the bottle, but also that oxygen can get in to the bottle and react with one’s ink. This is particularly deleterious for iron-gall inks.

IMO, if one receives any ink through the post in a plastic bottle, one ought to immediately decant that ink in to a glass bottle. Old ink bottles (suitably cleaned-out-&-sterilised first) are perfect for this.

 

Another option if one has used up all of the ink from a really attractive bottle (e.g.s Akkerman, or Pelikan Edelstein) is to fill it with diluted food colouring and re-purpose it as an ornament. Whether for a desk, a shelf, or a windowsill.

And one can of course always wash that solution out if one ever needs to re-use the bottle to contain ink.

[inkstainedruth]

I've only managed to actually empty a couple of bottles of ink (apart from the large bottle of Noodler's Kung Te Cheng that took a header off the bathroom counter after a single pen fill (now I transfer the ink into a small glass jar I bought for the purpose at an arts and crafts store).  For other inks in large size bottles, I will eyedropper some into sample vials.  For the really large bottles (an 8 oz. bottle of vintage Quink Permanent Violet, and a 3/4 full bottle of vintage Scrip Peacock, I transferred the ink into brown glass bottles bought specifically for the purpose and which had eyedropper caps.  The original bottles I gave away to a guy in my local pen club, who expressed an interest.

"Regular" size ink-bottles, go into the recycling bin -- or did, before they stopped doing glass pickup for recycling in my town -- now, like other clean bottles and jars, get taken to a recycling center and dumped in the appropriate bin.  I won't do that with the Akkerman bottles, though -- or the vintage Skrip jars with the "ink-shelf" because those could theoretically be cleaned out and reused with other inks.  Plastic bottles?  I don't really have too many of those.  Unfortunately, around here we can no longer recycle plastic except for #1 and #2 ones.  And I have the same problem with empty yogurt containers (which are #5 plastics); I actually contacted the company a couple of years ago, offering to ship them the empties back (I do clean them out), but was told they weren't "allowed" to re-use them....  So much for the "Please recycle" wording on the labels.... 

I did buy one empty MB "shoe" bottle for a buck or two at an antiques mall a few years ago, but haven't ever gotten around to cleaning it out to decant ink into.  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[miwishi63]

I keep mine around to replace any that may break.

[Runnin_Ute]

I have empties from all of the following:

Lamy

Levenger 

KWZI 

Pelikan 

Edelstein (62.5 ml)

Diamine (80 ml)

Waterman

Sheaffer Skrip (shelf/yellow & blue label)

 

There are a few not in this photo that have been refilled with other inks.

[Ink Stained Wretch]

10 hours ago, Mercian said:

IMO, if one receives any ink through the post in a plastic bottle, one ought to immediately decant that ink in to a glass bottle. Old ink bottles (suitably cleaned-out-&-sterilised first) are perfect for this.

 

This is exactly what I do . I started hoarding, er, rescuing Sheaffer Skrip bottles with the integral well back in the '60s. I put other things in them back then, or just kept them empty. When I get ink in a plastic bottle, such as some Visconti inks came in, I decant them as soon as I can. Volume loss through evaporation is my main concern. I also put some of my ink mixtures in them. I have a Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue bottle that is now devoting its 30 mL to my 5:1 = Cross Blue : Noodler's Black ink mixture. I have some empty Noodler's "3 ounce" bottles that will get some sort of mixture that I like enough to keep around, and I have two of the Noodler's Black eye dropper bottles that I think will at some point get something else in them.

[ruby.monkey]

Montblanc 60mm and Lamy T52 bottles make great inkwells, so they get kept. Everything else goes in the recycling bin.

[Scrawler]

On 3/1/2023 at 11:55 AM, antares1966 said:

Mmm, those Ackerman bottles tho...

I was wondering what to do with mine. I have 5 with no real idea of what I was going to do with them.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Classic Sheaffer "well" bottles: I refill them from Sheaffer "cone" bottles.

 

Sheaffer "cone" bottles, and Pelikan 4001 bottles: I generally keep my pushpins in them.

 

And the one bottle I have, of ink I actually use, that isn't either Sheaffer or Pelikan, I haven't used up yet.

[amper]

On 3/1/2023 at 2:15 AM, Centurion said:

I have yet to use up a bottle of ink, but it’s going to happen in a month or two. Some of my ink bottle are rather nice, I wonder if they can be repurposed to do something else, instead of having them disposed.

 

How have you repurpose a pretty ink bottle with all of its ink used up? 

 

Fill them with more ink! Or sell them! Lots of people want to buy empty ink bottles.

My primary ink is Mrs. Stewart's Concentrated Liquid Bluing, which comes in opaque plastic bottles. I have a vintage pre-Reunifitcation Pelikan 4001 bottle, into which I decant the bluing for use. I need a couple of more empty ink bottles, and I just ordered an empty vintage Montblanc bottle via eBay.

[JulieParadise]

2 hours ago, amper said:

Fill them with more ink! Or sell them! Lots of people want to buy empty ink bottles.

 

Well, anyone who comes to Berlin (maybe for Tom Westerich's Berlin Pen Party on March 18?! --> www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/368919-berlin-pen-party-march-18-2023-1600-berlin-moabit-arminius-markthalle ) can PM me and I'll bring my empty bottles to give them away (for free, of course). I'd love to get rid of them but hesitate to just trash them, as there are always people who'd love to get them.

 

We often bring empty bottles here in Berlin to our meetups as some people show interest in them.